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The Columbia Rolling Mill, an iron and steel works, operated in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, from 1887 to 1895. In 1895 it was sold to Andrew Carnegie, who moved the mill to Homestead, Pennsylvania. The mill was Uniontown's largest industry in the early 1890s.
The Columbia Rolling Mill had a substantial number of employees, especially in its first years of operation. It was serviced by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The mill reported marginal gains in 1887, 1888, and 1889. Although the gains were small, it proved those who thought the mill would quickly fold to be wrong. A small-scale strike hampered the mill in 1890. In 1891 and 1892, the mill reported losses. However, in 1893 the mill recovered and in 1894, the mill took in substantial gains. 1895 appeared to be another solid year, when suddenly, the mill was sold and moved. Andrew Carnegie paid an impressive sum for the mill and many Uniontown citizens lost their jobs.
The Columbia Rolling Mill had since been a topic of great controversy in Uniontown. In the late 19th century, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was gaining footing as an iron and steel producing giant. Andrew Carnegie had fabulous transportation services, thanks to the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers, and to the railroads servicing Pittsburgh. Much of the coal that was used in the Pittsburgh mills was obtained from the hills surrounding Connellsville, Pennsylvania, a neighboring town to Uniontown. Supposedly, Carnegie feared that a mill in Uniontown could lead to an Uniontown and Connellsville alliance that could hurt his profits. Uniontown was considerably closer to the rich coal fields than Pittsburgh, thus transportation costs will be cheaper. While Uniontown had no major waterways, the neighboring town of Brownsville, Pennsylvania, a shipbuilding center, was located on the Monongahela River. If Carnegie would not have seized the Columbia Rolling Mill before he did, other mills may have opened in the Uniontown area, causing problems for Carnegie.
In 1899, the joint stock company Steacy and Denney consolidated the Columbia Rolling Mill with Vesta Furnace and the York Rolling Mill. [1] The new company was called the Susquehanna Iron and Steel Co., and was capitalized at $1.5 million the following year. [1]
Fayette County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in southwestern Pennsylvania, adjacent to Maryland and West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 128,804. Its county seat is Uniontown. The county was created on September 26, 1783, from part of Westmoreland County and named after the Marquis de Lafayette.
Homestead is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, along the Monongahela River 7 miles (11 km) southeast of downtown Pittsburgh. The borough is known for the Homestead strike of 1892, an important event in the history of labor relations in the United States. The population was 2,884 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
Connellsville is a city in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, 36 miles (58 km) southeast of Pittsburgh and 50 miles (80 km) away via the Youghiogheny River, a tributary of the Monongahela River. It is part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. The population was 7,031 at the 2020 census.
Uniontown is the largest city in and county seat of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, 46 miles (74 km) southeast of Pittsburgh. The population was 9,984 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
The history of Pittsburgh began with centuries of Native American civilization in the modern Pittsburgh region, known as "Dionde:gâ'" in the Seneca language. Eventually, European explorers encountered the strategic confluence where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio, which leads to the Mississippi River. The area became a battleground when France and Great Britain fought for control in the 1750s. When the British were victorious, the French ceded control of territories east of the Mississippi.
The Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad is a class II railroad that operates in northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio.
Thomas Morrison Carnegie was a Scottish-born American industrialist. He was the brother of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and co-founder of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works.
The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, also known as the "Little Giant", was formed on May 11, 1875. Company headquarters were located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The line connected Pittsburgh in the east with Youngstown, Ohio in the Haselton neighborhood in the west and Connellsville, Pennsylvania to the east. It did not reach Lake Erie until the formation of Conrail in 1976. The P&LE was known as the "Little Giant" since the tonnage that it moved was out of proportion to its route mileage. While it operated around one tenth of one percent of the nation's railroad miles, it hauled around one percent of its tonnage. This was largely because the P&LE served the steel mills of the greater Pittsburgh area, which consumed and shipped vast amounts of materials. It was a specialized railroad deriving much of its revenue from coal, coke, iron ore, limestone, and steel. The eventual closure of the steel mills led to the end of the P&LE as an independent line in 1992.
Carnegie Steel Company was a steel-producing company primarily created by Andrew Carnegie and several close associates to manage businesses at steel mills in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area in the late 19th century. The company was formed in 1892 and was subsequently sold in 1901 in one of the largest business transactions of the early 20th century, to become the major component of U.S. Steel. The sale made Carnegie one of the richest men in history.
The Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation, also known as J&L Steel or simply as J&L, was an American steel and iron manufacturer that operated from 1852 until 1968. Beginning as the American Iron Company, founded in 1852 by Bernard Lauth and Benjamin Franklin Jones, a few miles south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River. Lauth's interest was bought in 1854 by James Laughlin. The first firm to bear the name of Jones and Laughlin was organized in 1861, and headquartered at Third & Ross in downtown Pittsburgh.
The Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway was a railroad in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Wheeling, West Virginia, areas. Originally built as the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, a Pittsburgh extension of George J. Gould's Wabash Railroad, the venture entered receivership in 1908 and the line was cut loose. An extension completed in 1931 connected it to the Western Maryland Railway at Connellsville, Pennsylvania, forming part of the Alphabet Route, a coalition of independent lines between the Northeastern United States and the Midwest. It was leased by the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1964 in conjunction with the N&W acquiring several other sections of the former Alphabet Route, but was leased to the new spinoff Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway in 1990, just months before the N&W was merged into the Norfolk Southern Railway.
A large metropolitan area that is surrounded by rivers and hills, Pittsburgh has an infrastructure system that has been built out over the years to include roads, tunnels, bridges, railroads, inclines, bike paths, and stairways; however, the hills and rivers still form many barriers to transportation within the city.
Union Railroad is a Class III switching railroad located in Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania. The company is owned by Transtar, Inc., which is a subsidiary of Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors, after being acquired from U.S. Steel in 2021. The railroad's primary customers are the three plants of the USS Mon Valley Works, the USS Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the USS Irvin Works and the USS Clairton Works.
The Edgar Thomson Steel Works is a steel mill in the Pittsburgh area communities of Braddock and North Braddock, Pennsylvania. It has been active since 1875. It is currently owned by U.S. Steel and is known as Mon Valley Works – Edgar Thomson Plant.
Carrie Furnace is a former blast furnace located along the Monongahela River in the Pittsburgh area industrial town of Swissvale, Pennsylvania, and it had formed a part of the Homestead Steel Works. The Carrie Furnaces were built in 1884 and they operated until 1982. During its peak, the site produced 1,000 to 1,250 tons of iron per day. All that is left of the site are furnaces #6 and #7, which operated from 1907 to 1978, and its hot metal bridge. The furnaces, designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006, are among the only pre-World War II 20th century blast furnaces to survive.
The economy of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is diversified, focused on services, medicine, higher education, tourism, banking, corporate headquarters and high technology. Once the center of the American steel industry, and still known as "The Steel City", today the city of Pittsburgh has no steel mills within its limits, though Pittsburgh-based companies such as US Steel, Ampco Pittsburgh and Allegheny Technologies own several working mills in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
West Penn Railways, one part of the West Penn System, was an interurban electric railway headquartered in Connellsville, Pennsylvania. It was part of the region's power generation utility.
The Pittsburgh coal seam is the thickest and most extensive coal bed in the Appalachian Basin; hence, it is the most economically important coal bed in the eastern United States. The Upper Pennsylvanian Pittsburgh coal bed of the Monongahela Group is extensive and continuous, extending over 11,000 mi2 through 53 counties. It extends from Allegany County, Maryland to Belmont County, Ohio and from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania southwest to Putnam County, West Virginia.
The Illinois Steel Company was an American steel producer with five plants in Illinois and Wisconsin. Founded through a consolidation in 1889, Illinois Steel grew to become the largest steel producer in the United States. In 1898, several other steel and transportation companies were merged into it to form the Federal Steel Company, itself merged into U.S. Steel in 1901.
Port Perry was a town along the Monongahela River near Braddock, Pennsylvania and by the mouth of Turtle Creek. It disappeared by 1945, having been gradually replaced by railroad tracks serving the nearby Edgar Thomson Steel Works.